http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7779223.stmI know XP Antivirus was popular or so I assumed because it was featured on some popular download sites and had good ratings.
Turns out though it was a scam and didn't do anything at all that an antivirus program should do.
[edit] And the method these companies used to get people to buy the software is criminal and devious as has been reported.
Scareware is more of a marketing method rather than refering to actual software as some vendors of software that *may* actually be useful still use bullsh*t scare tactics to peddle their wares. I'm all for this being clamped down on, hard.
Sounds like the old mafia "protection" racket.
I think the impact of this stuff would only be on complete noobs.
I think the impact of this stuff would only be on complete noobs.
Of which there are many.
Or what about those "free" online virus scanners that say "Yes we did indeed find the Trojan on your computer! Now if you pay $20 we will also remove it." :D
It's particularly impressive when those things appear and people assume it's their installed virus scanner (Norton, of course :/) requiring them to pay $20.
I think scareware and drive-by downloads like this are largely fueled by the "advertisements" that appear on most web sites. What we need is web advertisement hosts to be held accountable for their content. In Canada, we have an Advertising Standards group that makes sure any conventional advertising (television, radio, print) is truthful, safe and not discriminatory. They are effective. Many countries have that kind of thing.
However, the Internet is something of an unexplained realm to this point. The advertising standards groups have no real effect on it all since the whole technology is a constant import / export. It's something like a purée of borders. (Compose key FTW!).
As a result, web advertisers continually export their advertisements - ads which would be banned immediately in any other medium - upon a group of people who are completely unused to such things. A lot of the advertisement services strike me as something like mercenaries; they don't really care what the ads contain just so long as they get paid for serving them. They do get paid, and the advertisements they spew over the web continue to trick unsuspecting users into doing things like download the Antivirus 2008 malware, sign up to nasty pyramid schemes and rarely ever actually legitimately buy / look at useful things.
Then it comes down to the web developers. They link to these advertisements because they need money. Right now, many don't care at all whether they are basically giving away their users to thieves and liars. They need to so their sites can keep running!
So what happens? Some users (the clever ones) use things like adblock to stop those intrusions. Web developers apply more ads, advertisers get more obtrusive, advertisements themselves get more annoying.
Legitimate advertisers like Google, which do have standards, are filtered - almost as collateral damage - by the same tools those clever users use. Most users, who do not have adblock and still run Internet Explorer 6, are hit head-on by the rougher advertisements and are completely traumatized by them.
So what needs to happen, in my opinion, is we need to support good advertising on the web. People shouldn't discriminate against the "good" advertisers with tools like Adblock - at least not by default - because so long as we do that nothing will change. It would be really nice if website developers could recognize the option of using more ethical advertising services and earning more positive income as a result. It really would be no different from our existing advertising standards in print or TV, except that the regulation is in the hands of individual users.